


i know that i am safe (for the moon looking down at me)

by 8The_Great_Perhaps8



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Fairy Tale Elements, Folklore, Gen, Haruno Sakura-centric, Metaphors, POV Multiple, Pseudo-History, Reincarnation, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:04:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18996853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8The_Great_Perhaps8/pseuds/8The_Great_Perhaps8
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess.And there she is again, and again, and again, and again.(The story of the three souls sentenced to an eternity of the world)





	i know that i am safe (for the moon looking down at me)

Once upon a time, there was a three-eyed beast.

One of the beast’s eyes was in the middle of its face. This eye was the same beautiful blue as the ocean, with many layers of white and silver froth within it, and it saw only the beast’s regrets. And the beast had many regrets, for the beast was unloved and so he wanted the world to be unloved as well.

The second of the beast’s eyes was on the back of its head.  This eye was red and black, and it saw only the ways the beast had been wronged. And the beast had been wronged many  times, because so much of the beast’s world was cruel, full of unloved people who, in turn, decided that the rest of the world should be unloved as well.

The beast’s third eye was on its heart. This eye was a pale, mint-shade of green, and it saw all the things that the beast feared. And the beast feared many things, for the beast lived within a cruel world, with no allies and no victories, and the world is a terrifying place, when one is all alone.

One day, the beast came upon three children.

The first child was sixteen years old. He stood in front of the other two children, so that he was protecting them, and he held a stone within his hands, which he threatened to throw at the beast.

The beast stared intently at the child, and saw how the child’s eyes were most, how the child’s eyes were rimmed with red, how the child’s skin was dry and pocked beneath his eyes.

The beast reached his fingers into the socket of the first eye, pulling out the frothy blue of regret, and he took the child’s head in his hand and forced his own eye into the first child’s socket, over what was already there.

As the first child fell to the ground and screamed and wept with his new eye and his new regrets, the second child stepped forward.

The second child was twelve years old, and he held a knife in each hand, and he did not need to speak to tell the beast what he would do with them.

The beast gazed at the child, saw his scars and the way his lip trembled and the way his eyes seemed to glare permanently.

The beast reached around and plucked his second eye, the eye of being wrong, out of the back of his skull, and he took the child’s head in his hand and forced his own eye into the child’s socket.

The child glared at the beast, and he told the beast that he would never forgive him, and then the blood began to overtake the child’s eyes, and he fell to his knees, screaming.

The third child stood still, as the other two fell around her. She was eight years old, and she stared at the beast with a quiet wisdom.

The beast stared at her for a long time. Something about her frightened him- her body was already ready to fight, muscles rippling beneath her skin, but her eyes, shaped like a half-full moon, still held the universal kindness of a child, the unblaming wonder and confusion. She was too strong, and all the beast could see now was what he feared.

So the beast beckoned the third child closer. The third child approached, slowly, with the stumbling steps of a child, until she stood in front of the beast, her chin tilted up to stare into the beast’’s face.

The beast reached his long claws forward, his paw trembling, and plucked the third child’s right eye from her socket. The third child did not scream, but her eye kept staring at the monster’s face, even as it pulled and snapped away from its home.

And the beast reached towards its heart, and plucked out his last, milky-green eye, and gently rolled it into the third child’s empty socket.

The third child blinked, several times, and then began to weep. She turned away from the beast, for the beast frightened her so. She saw, writhing on the ground, the first child and the second child, and she feared them, as well, and she feared how the beast had broken them, and she feared that the beast had broken her, as well.

The third child began to run, far away from the first child and the second child, for she was afraid of everything. She was afraid of the ground she walked on, of the air she breathed, of the food she ate and the water she drank. She feared the first child, for how brave and bold he was; and she feared the second child, for how brave and strong he was; and she feared even herself, for she was too strong to be a child but too wise to be an adult, and she did not fit in.

After many years of weeping, the first child stood. He was gaunt, now, and tired, but he was stronger for having faced his regrets and for having been able to stand, even with those regrets.

Many months after that, the second child stood. The second child had been tended to by the first child, but still was gaunt, and pale. He was stronger, now, for having seen how he had been wronged, and for having accepted that he had been wronged without burning in anger.

The third child was always afraid, and she never returned to the first and second child. She was strong, though, for being so afraid of everything in the world and still living within the world. Strong, but separate, distinct, disconnected.

The third child died alone and afraid, while the first child and the second child were together and safe.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess.

Her hair was the sheer beautiful black of the darkest midnight, and it shined almost as a mirror. Her eyes were the bright blue of the open sky just moments after sunrise. Her lips were the beautiful sweet pink of the camellia flowers outside of her window, soft and eternally half-puckered in a cupid’s bow kiss.

The princess, despite her beauty and her intelligence and her kindness, was sad.

She was sad because her entire world was at war. There was no place where she could go that was not overridden with anger, or terror, or desperation, and she was to inherit that world from her father, the king, and she had no idea how to fix it.

One day, the princess ran away from her home, a home which had been destroyed in the wars of the countries around her, burned to the ground. The princess feared war, a fear so strong that she was nearly paralyzed by it, except for the one time that the war came to her home and she was so frightened that she ran.

The princess ran for one thousand days and one thousand nights, and her feet bled and her eyes wept, and still the war raged on, for the war never ended and the princess never stopped.

Once upon a time, there was a tree.

The tree was a good tree, and an intelligent tree. The tree did not need anything besides the light from the sun and the water from the clouds and the dirt from beneath its roots. The tree grew tall and solid, with dark green leaves and soft orange fruits. The tree was proud of the fruits that it grew, for they were juicy and sweet. However, few ever had the pleasure of eating one, as the tree was off in a lonely clearing in the forest.

One day, a little human girl ran into the tree’s clearing, weeping. She fell to her knees, beneath the tree’s dappled shade, and let her tears fall upon the tree’s roots.

“Little girl,” the tree said, voice creaking with age and effort, “why do you weep?”

“Oh, tree,” the girl wept, “I weep for the wars in my world, and for the fact that I cannot stop them, and for all who have suffered in them.”

“Do not weep, little girl,” said the tree. It plucked the sweetest, softest, most golden fruit from its branches and held it out to the girl. “I will give you this fruit. It contains three bites, and for each bite of it you take, you may have one wish.”

The girl sniffled, and gently took the fruit from the tree’s branch. “Thank you, Lord Tree.”

“Do not thank me, little girl,” the tree said. “Only make your wishes, that you may end your world of war.”

The girl wiped away her tears, and nodded.

The girl took a single bite of the fruit, the sticky sweet juices falling down her chin as tears fell down her cheeks.

“I wish,” the girl said, “that I was powerful.”

The fruit fell down the girl’s throat and into her stomach, and it began to glow and overtake her, as her honeyed skin became cold and pale with the power of the fruit.

The girl sniffled again, her tears beginning to dry. She took another bite of the fruit.

“I wish,” the girl said, “that there were no more wars, anywhere in all the land.”

And the sweet scent of the fruit overtook the clearing, and the forest, and the land of the princess, until the world was coated over with the sweet scent of the tree’s fruit, and all the warriors and shinobi and samurai slowly ground to a halt, and the fighting stopped, the clashing of blades slowed, and the world was quiet.

“One wish remains,” the tree reminded the girl.

“Thank you, Lord Tree,” the girl said.

She took her final bite of the fruit.

“I wish,” she said, tears beginning to roll down her face once more, “that I could go home.”

Once upon a time, there was a woman in the moon.

Her skin was as pale as the pearlescent sand she stood on, her eyes the same soft, moonstone lavender as light cresting over the moon’s horizon, her hair the same sweet, opalescent beryl as the sea that she gazed over in the mornings. She had two dark brown horns which came together in the shape of the crescent of the Earth she saw from her lunar shores. Her lips were the color of the blazing red sun, along with the seal of power on her forehead.

Once upon a time, the woman in the moon went to the Earth.

It was almost as beautiful as her moon. The grasses had so many brilliant shades of green and yellow, the flowers nearly every color that she could imagine, the oceans ranging from the darkest navy to the lightest silver, and the sky as the sun rose and set- so many colors, and so few that the woman could see in her moon.

The woman fell in love with the Earth, and with the funny little creatures that lived there, the ones that looked nearly like the woman herself, but without her beautiful moon coloring, without her blazing-red seals, without the power and nobility that came from being moonborn. They were soft, and they were delicate, and they were so easy to break.

When the woman in the moon walked upon the Earth, she left behind burning footprints and silvery winds woven from the melody of the songs she hummed to herself.

Once upon a time, there was a lonely bamboo cutter. He was old, and lived alone in his little hut, and desperately wanted a child- but there was no woman who would have him, and so he was certain that he would die alone, with no heir to teach the ways of the bamboo.

Once upon a time, the woman in the moon pushed aside the tall bamboo shoots, and came upon the lonely bamboo cutter, as he drank tea in his hut.

The lonely bamboo cutter knew nothing of the woman in the moon, or of her royalty, or of her power. He knew only that she was beautiful, and so he invited her to take tea with him.

The woman in the moon was charmed by the lonely bamboo cutter, and so she took tea with him. He was kind, and sweet, and honest, and simple, and the woman in the moon loved him despite this.

The woman in the moon finished her trip around the world, and returned to the moon.

Once upon a time, there were two little boys.

They were born to an old bamboo cutter, and they never knew their mother. The boys were pale, with ghostly white skin and two tiny nubbish horns on their heads. When they asked their father the bamboo cutter about their mother, all he would tell them was that she was beautiful, and sweet, and kind enough to grant him his sons and some company for his tea.

The younger boy was a good boy. He was obedient to his father, he did his chores without complaint, and he only played when there was no more work to be done.

The older boy was a naughty boy. He ignored his father, he whined and complained as he did his chores, and he was always searching for a time to play.

Still, the two little boys and the old bamboo cutter were good to each other, and on the warm summer nights, they would sit out on the porch of the hut and stare up at the moon and the stars.

Once upon a time, the woman in the moon leapt from the moon to the Earth. There, she found the old bamboo cutter, long dead, and her two sons.

Both the sons were playing, when their mother came, playing with skills that did not come from their bamboo cutter father, but from the power that lay within their mother.

The heart of the woman in the moon ached as the woman watched her sons, play with that power that they didn’t understand. Dangerous power, power that could burn footprints that became ponds into the landscape and spin silvery gusts of wind around the globe, and neither of them knew what they did.

And so, the woman in the moon tried to take the power from them, to eliminate the spark, so that they would be safe. But her sons did not understand why she wanted to take this from them, and so they fought her, as children who don’t understand their parents’ reasons always do. This made the heart of the woman in the moon ache even more, as though it were being squeezed in the hand of a cruel man.

They quarrelled, far more angrily than families should ever quarrel, and for far longer, too. After many months of quarrelling, the younger son finally saw sense, while the older son was, as always, delaying his work, off in another world.

And then, when the older son came back to his mother and his younger brother, he fought his younger brother, a greater spat than they had had in their childhood days.

The older son killed the younger son, and brought him back as something unrecognizable.

Once upon a time, there was a lonely tree.

The tree was a good tree, and an intelligent tree, although it had once been foolish enough to believe that it needed nothing more than the light from the sun, the water from the clouds, and the dirt from beneath its roots.

The tree had once had a friend, though it had only known her for the time it takes to eat a fruit and make three wishes. The tree had not known, until it met the girl, what loneliness was. And then, after it had met the girl for only a moment, it had been nearly crushed by the feeling, until it grew crooked and its once solid trunk was twisted into a sickly curve. The tree longed for the girl, as it occasionally longed for the rain after a dry spell, or for the sun after a storm.

One day, the girl came stumbling back into the tree’s clearing. She was different, when she came, but the tree recognized her as the same sad human girl that had stumbled into its clearing so many years ago.

“Lord Tree,” begged the girl, “please help me. My sons have betrayed me, and their father has died, and I fear that I may lose my very life without your gracious assistance.”

“Of course,” said the tree, trying to pretend that he had not longed for the girl as the Earth longed for the sun, or as the heart longed for hurt.

Once upon a time, there was a mother.

She wanted to take the power from her children, so that their footsteps would not burn, so that their songs would not wind around the world, blowing back hair and sand and tree branches.

Her sons fought back, as children who do not understand their parents’ reasons always do.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

The little girl was coated in grime and bruises and cuts, her bones weak and sprained, for she lived in the midst of a terrible disaster.

The world was falling apart around her, because the two sides that caused the disaster fought so strongly and with such power that the world itself couldn't withstand their blows. So the girl was always travelling around the world, in search of a place where she could sit down and wash herself with clean and pure water.

One day, as the girl was travelling, a beautiful woman found her. The beautiful woman was pristine, nearly glowing with how clean she was compared to the filth of the rest of the world, and she stopped to talk to the girl.

They spoke for only an hour, the girl's eyes wide with wonder the whole time.

When they were done speaking, the woman stood from where she had been kneeling, and smiled benevolently down at the girl.

"Little girl, I will give you a gift," she said, "to help you survive a world that is stronger than you, and still being blown apart."

The woman plucked a strand of her glowing white hair, and she tied it around the girl's tongue.

"There," she said, "now you have a bit of my power, and besides that power, you have a bit of my voice, so that you can speak up for yourself in a world that was not made for you to thrive."

The girl thanked the woman profusely, her voice still glowing slightly with the light of the woman's hair.

"I have not long left, now," the woman said to the girl. "I give this to you now, because I will not ever come back. Now, there is always a part of me here on Earth."

And the woman walked away.

Once upon a time, there was a monster.

The monster hungered for power, and struck out jealously against those that had any scrap of the power that she so desperately desired. The monster hissed, spat, growled, and fought so hard that the world around her changed, new lakes and oceans forming from its footprints, mountains and hills growing out of the crust of the Earth, as the monster pulled at the ground with its jaws.

One day, two brave heroes defeated the monster, sealing it with powerful magics, and sending it away to the moon, so that it could harm no one ever again. The younger warrior went along with the monster, to make sure that it wouldn't fall back to Earth when the moon was full.

Once upon a time, there was a powerful warrior.

He was the most powerful warrior that the world had ever known, so strong that he knew every technique of every style of fighting, so strong that he was the first person to ever use the power of the world to supplement his power, so strong that he created many fighting techniques.

The powerful warrior had two sons. The elder one had seemed more similar to the warrior, at first, until the younger began his practice.

The elder son, although unlike his father, was skilled in manipulating the world’s power, and used the skill to create fire, and to help the villagers around him improve their livelihoods, and to improve their minds and hearts.

The younger son, the inheritor of his father’s power and teaching, worked hard to improve what his father taught him, using his father’s lessons in the power of the world to heal, and to build, and to strengthen.

The warrior died peacefully, content with his strength and how he had trained his sons.

Once upon a time, there were two brothers.

The elder brother was disregarded by their father in favor of the younger brother, who was more suited to their father’s teachings. Instead, the elder brother created his own art, his own methods of manipulating the power of the world.

The younger brother worked hard to learn from their father, and did his best to be like him, to emulate his teachings, and in doing so became his father’s heir over the elder brother.

The elder brother, so rejected by his father, found comfort in a monster, who came upon the elder son and fed him lies and half-truths and manipulations.

Once upon a time, there was a war.

The war was so old, no one could remember how it began. Legend had it that two brothers had begun the quarrel, and that that small quarrel had led to the war that shook the Earth and burned the air and cried for relief.

On one side of the war was the family of shadows. Their silhouettes were pure black, only their glowing red eyes leaving any mark that they were there, in the darkness of the forest.

On the other side of the war was the family of the sun. Their hair was bright, as were their eyes, and the only reason that no one saw them in the darkness of the forest was because there was no one left to see.

The war never ended.

Once upon a time, there were nine siblings. Not brothers or sisters, because they were made of the power of the world and so had no genders or titles, and so they were siblings.

The siblings were all the same age, born as they were within the same day, the same moment, of the same energy.

The siblings were good, sometimes, when they thought to be kind. When they forgot to think, they could be terrible.

When they were hurt, they were terrible; and when one of their own was hurt, they were worse. They were family, as their father had taught them, and family had to stick together.

Once upon a time, there was a woman born of the waves.

The woman lived on a tiny island, one which more people washed up on every day, from the wild, uncontrolled ocean around them.

When the woman was a child, after she had lived upon the island for several years, after the waves had thrown her to the briny, rocky beach, she stood on the same beach and stared out and the angry froths, her fists clenched at her sides.

The woman had named herself for the mad froths of the sea, and she had become the leader of the tiny island that the survivors washed up on. The woman glared out at the sea, and tried to force it to bow to her, and the sea refused. The moon, reflected in the ocean’s rage, giggled at the woman, and the woman’s moonish reflection in her own eyes laughed back.

The woman stepped upon the waves, insistent, and the waves tried to buck and throw her off, but the woman forced the world’s power into herself, into her heart and body, and then through her feet, carefully painting her soles with it, coating her well-worn soles with the power, roughening her calluses and smoothing the balls of her feet, until she walked as smooth across the whirling lather as though she were walking across a flat piece of granite. She forced the raging eddies to bow before her, and she pulled from the violent tides the rest of her family, carved of the salt within the sea, and named them as she had named herself, for having bent the whirlpools to her will.

Once upon a time, there was a village. It was a village whose people had begun hidden in the rustling of the leaves of its trees, until they stepped down from the strong branches of the trees to the cool, moist dirt below. The village was hidden within a vast forest, a forest that was older than anyone who had ever known the village.

The village was founded by two enemies.

One enemy was half-mad, the only survivor of five brothers, the sole leader of his clan, with no one he could trust or rely on.

  
The other enemy was entirely sane, with an enormous family, and he though he had suffered losses, similar losses- two brothers and both parents gone- he had others that he could trust and rely on.

The lucky enemy was the leader of the village. He had suffered fewer losses, and had more people to stand behind him. He was trusted.

The lucky enemy did not want to lose the unlucky enemy, however. He pitied the unlucky enemy, pitied him for all he had lost and for all that he had been forced to do, and he wanted for them to stop being enemies.

And so, the lucky enemy made the unlucky enemy the leader of the village's security. The unlucky enemy and the unlucky enemy's family would be responsible for the safety of the village.

The unlucky enemy, though half-mad, was a wise man.

The lucky enemy was a fool.

He thought he was eliminating an ally, was creating a friend for a lifetime and the lifetimes that would follow the enemies.

Instead, he was separating the unlucky enemy and the unlucky enemy’s family into a separate life, nearly a separate village as the rest of the villagers hidden in the rustling of the leaves.

Once upon a time, there was a tree.

The tree was a good tree, and an intelligent tree, and a lonely tree. It had had one friend once, many thousands of years ago, or so it thought- it was difficult to remember, after so many years, but there must have been a friend, once.

The tree had once bared beautiful fruits, the sweetest and juiciest fruits in all the world. Fruits that had been powerful enough to remake people.

The tree lived alone in its clearing, wanting only for the water from the clouds, dirt from beneath its roots, and the bright silver light from the moon.

Its fruits, now, grew small and hard, bitter and unwanted. No desperate visitors would come to the tree’s clearing, now, in search of the fruits that changed the world.

One day, two little boys came to the tree’s  clearing, laughing and playing and enjoying each other’s company. The played through the tree’s clearing, jumping and leaping from the branches making up the outside of the clearing, and they rolled through the grass and practiced swordplay with branches and sparred until one was too sore and had to go home.

The boy who was left collapsed on the grass, his head lying in a fork of the tree’s roots. He sighed contentedly, staring up at what little sky could be seen through the tree’s thick leaves.

“Mister Tree,” asked the boy, “please, may I have one of your fruits? I’m very hungry.”

The tree’s branch creaked, slowly, as the old branches reached down to offer the boy a fruit.

“It is bitter,” the tree apologized, “and small, only enough for one bite. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” said the boy, taking the tree’s fruit. “I was so hungry, I don’t mind bitter fruit.”

The boy ate the tree’s fruit, and though the fruit was bitter and small, it filled the boy’s belly. It glowed, as light as the glow of the last dying ember, and that one faint dying light spread throughout the boy’s body.

“Thank you, Mister Tree,” the boy said. “I have to go, now. But I promise that I will come back and visit.”

“Thank you,” said the tree. “I gratefully await the day I see you again.”

The tree was very, very lonely.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman.

Her hair was the color of camellia blossoms, and her eyes the same slate-gray of her ocean. She was born on a tiny rock in the center of the ocean, hidden from the rest of the world by the furious eddies that had once sent it its people.

Although the woman’s village was hidden by the wild power of the sea, was built out of the force and the fury of the lost souls washed away by the whirling froth, the woman was calm. She was not the cruel thoughtlessness, carelessness of the sea; but the stubborn, unyielding stone of the island that rose from it. She was renowned for her beauty, and for the great strength that she wielded with a gentle grace.

One day, a handsome man came to the woman’s village.

He requested aid- he and a coalition of warriors had just established their own village, one hidden within the soft rustling of the Western lands, and they had not enough resources to keep themselves safe through the winter, and they had women, children, elderly and infirm, and the woman’s village was renowned for their kindness and for their great power.

And the woman’s leader- the uncle of her father’s cousin, and so her own uncle- granted him aid, out of the kindness of his heart, and the woman offered herself as a guard to accompany the man back to his home, his newly made village.

The man had laughed, when she had said that, and had said that he would be glad of her company, but that he doubted that he would need her skills as a guard, for he was a very skilled warrior.

And the woman laughed at him, for she was already in love with the man since she had first peeked through the windows of her uncle’s building as he dealt with the man.

And the man laughed, too, for he had not known of the woman’s powers.

On the trip back to the man’s village, he was nearly slain by a rogue warrior, one who had no village or family to lose. He was vicious, and cruel, and fought for his life and to take the man’s.

And the woman defended the man she loved, and killed the rogue warrior within a minute.

And the man declared that he was in love with her, and the woman had laughed, and they had been married in the man’s new village, its first grand celebration.

Once upon a time, there was a madman.

The man was driven mad by all the losses he had suffered- he had lost his eldest brother when he had been four and his brother eleven, his elder brother when he had been seven and his brother twelve, his youngest brother when he had been twelve and his brother six, and his younger brother when he had been twenty-six and his brother twenty-four.

The madman had no one- even within his own village, he was alone, sequestered into a separate quarter from his fellow man, left only with his own tribe- his own tribe, which did not understand all he had lost, for all he wept with his brother’s eyes.

One day, the man found a beautiful jade tablet. It had been in his tribe for generations, since long before there even was a village, and it was only now that the madman saw the words inscribed into it, delicate words, telling of the power that could be found so that no others would ever be hurt, and the madman set off in search of that power.

And the madman found it, in a storm of power that had been alive since before there was a village, before there was the madman’s dead brothers, before there was the madman’s tribe.

And the madman harnessed the storm, and brought it home with him to the village.

But the leader of the village told him to take it away, told him that it was unsafe, and the madman wept for his leader’s foolishness, for the foolishness of a man who could not see how to bring safety to his people.

And the storm reminded the madman that the brother of the village leader had been the one to kill the madman’s younger brother, and the one who had refused to punish the murderer had been the leader himself.

And the madman fought his leader, desperately, as only those who have lost things so terribly can fight.

Until the leader of the village killed the madman, the pathetic old man who was afraid to lose anything more to the cruel whims of the world, who was so desperate to find a power that would prevent any others from being hurt.

And the leader of the village denied the madman the dignity of even being buried within the home that he had built for himself, denied the honor of a shrine, of a grave.

And the storm wept for its lost master, the master who had wanted to use its power to protect. The storm wept until all of its water had fallen to the ground and had begun to grow a garden.

Once upon a time, there was a clever fox.

The clever fox had had eight siblings and a father. The clever fox was the youngest of his siblings, barely able to open his eyes when his father had died.

The clever fox’s siblings, after their father had died, left the clever fox be. He was clever, they knew, and so could fend for himself. The clever fox, they joked, was in less danger from the world than his older brother, the foolish tanuki

The clever fox was not afraid of the world. He knew he was clever, and he knew that he was more clever than his foolish older brother.

However, the clever fox knew nothing of the truth of the world. He knew of the world, of the many plants that decorated it, of the animals that lived on it, of the oceans that covered it, but he knew nothing of the world’s truths.

And every truth that the clever fox learned hurt. The truth that the world was cruel, it hurt. The truth that he was alone, it hurt. The truth that death never ended, it hurt.

And as the clever fox was hurt, he became crueler.

He ignored the cries of injured cats on the roadside, forged on ahead past the warnings of the tanuki in the forest, pushed through the whining protests of the summer insects.

The clever fox’s older sister, the sweet cat, cried, “Brother, I do not even recognize you!”

The clever fox’s older brother, the patient slug, said, “Brother, be patient of their faults.”

The clever fox said, “Leave me alone.”

And the clever fox grew older, and crueler, and came to be known as a shrewd kitsune.

The shrewd kitsune hated the world, and hated the people that lived on it, for all the hurt that had been forced onto him, and he wanted only to be left alone.

One day, a cruel man found the shrewd kitsune, who was lying in the caves by the seashore. The cruel man came with a burning rope, which he tricked around the shrewd kitsune with until it was wrapped around the shrewd kitsune’s neck.

The cruel man pulled the shrewd kitsune away from the seashore caves, tugging at the shrewd kitsune with his burning leash.

The shrewd kitsune cried for help, but everything ignored him. The cats at the roadside gazed at him disdainfully and licked their paws; the tanuki in the forest watched him with their glowing eyes; the summer insects stinged and burned him as he walked through them.

The cruel man dragged the kitsune into a long, flat plain, and forced him to fight. The shrewd kitsune did not care enough to fight, but he fought anyway, knowing as he did that doing what the cruel man wanted was the fastest way to escape him.

However, the cruel man was fighting against a cruel woman and another cruel man.

The second cruel man lashed out at the shrewd kitsune, scratching him and slashing him and hitting him as though he had attacked of his own volition. The second cruel man attacked the shrewd kitsune more angrily than he attacked the cruel man, as though the shrewd kitsune had begun the confrontation.

The cruel men, eventually, turned away from the shrewd kitsune to fight each other, more intently and more cruelly than when the shrewd kitsune had been involved, so the shrewd kitsune fled from the battle, hiding in the tall grasses of the wide plain.

After several minutes of hiding- not enough for any of the worst of the shrewd kitsune’s injuries to heal, only barely enough for his bruises to begin to fade- the cruel woman happened upon him.

The cruel woman knelt before him, and for a moment, the shrewd kitsune thought that the world would be kind- but, instead, the cruel woman lifted the shrewd kitsune by the scruff of his neck and swallowed him whole.

Within the cruel woman’s stomach, the kitsune glowed, softly. He shouted and screamed and cried and raged, until the woman’s voice echoed within herself, shouting and howling and telling the shrewd kitsune to be silent, to stop his fighting, and to accept his sentence.

The shrewd kitsune wept for all he would lose- for his siblings, who he would never see again; for the songs of the crickets, which he would never hear again; for the fields of blooming flowers, which he would never smell again; and for the stiff, briny sea breeze and the gritty, salty sand of the seaside cave, which he would never feel again.

The shrewd kitsune wept so long, and so sadly, and so bitterly, that his tears became, rather than saltwater, acid, which burned him so deeply and so cruelly that the shrewd kitsune himself became cruel, and he shouted and raged and spat acid within the woman, the same burning acid which had burned his eyes and face.

And still, the woman called for silence, called for the shrewd kitsune to quiet his complaints, for she had defeated him.

And the shrewd kitsune wept and burned within the woman, until he had become a mere cruel fox, too distant from his siblings to be able to know him if he could ever escape the cruel woman’s body.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

The little girl was born with silver hair, glowing like the unlucky moon, and when her father saw her- her mother asleep after a long and difficult birth, one that should have killed her- he cursed her, called her a monster, and told one of his wife’s nursemaids to put the child in the woods so that it would die and leave them in peace.

The nursemaid took the child into the woods, moving carefully so as not to disturb the woods- not the child. She knelt down, when she was in the deepest portion of the woods, where the trees grew tall enough to scrape the stars and the animals were strange and unsuspecting, and she lay the babe down in the crook of two giant tree roots before she ran back to the man’s house.

In the morning, the babe was still alive, suckled as she was by a strange and unsuspecting wolf- one with ivy-green eyes ringed with silver, and teeth nearly the size of the babe herself.

The wolf raised the babe as one of her own pups, teaching her the ways of the woods- to leap from branch to branch, to hunt the strange and unsuspecting creatures within the forest, to howl to the moon in the hopes of gaining some faint scrap of luck or favor from the beautiful orb, high in the sky.

The babe-turned-girl-and-wolf stood often at the edge of the forest, staring at her father’s home, letting the breeze blow past her. On the dark nights, she seemed nearly to glow, and her father and mother stared out the window at her, as she waited for them to remember that she was their daughter.

One night, the girl howled to the moon, and the moon screamed back, and the girl’s old family died.

She galloped out of the woods on all fours, her blue-eyed brother following on her left and her red-eyed brother on her right, and she walked into her home on all fours, slowly rising to her feet, and she surveyed her home and lands.

She patted each of her brothers once, offered them to stay, to gorge themselves on the feast that the moon had gave them, and she ran back into the forest, searching desperately for her mother.

She found her mother, bathing in a pool of opalescent moonlight, already gorged on raw meat and blood, and already knowing what her daughter was searching for.

The girl knelt before her mother, and her mother opened one long scratch down her arm, so that blood trickled out.

The girl sliced open her mother’s own foreleg so that it bled crimson-purple, and the girl mingled the blood within the moonlight.

Carefully, the girl removed the scroll of bamboo that she had stolen from her father’s library, and she pressed her handprint upon it. Gently, she passed it to her mother, who pressed her paw against the delicate paper.

The girl re-rolled the bamboo scroll, tying it shut with a twenty-inch blade of sawgrass.

She kissed her mother’s cheek, and allowed her mother to lick her cheek in return.

And the girl bowed to her mother, before she stood and walked from her home to the world of man, where her brothers were waiting.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy.

The little boy was always afraid, because he had grown up in the middle of the world falling apart.

The world was crumbling, like sugar cubes in coffee, and the little boy was constantly jumping from grain to grain, trying to find a place where he could land and rest for a while.

But the boy could never rest.

As the world crumbled apart, the boy leapt from island to island of collapsing ground, trying desperately to follow behind the other few who leapt across the disintegrating archipelago.

The little boy was never fast enough, though, always with one foot still on the falling stone as he jumped forward.

The little boy was so terrified of the world falling apart, that he started trying to piece the world desperately back to how it had been, regardless of who he hurt, who he cut with the stones he shoved together and the people whose bones he ground into glue to stick them together.

And the real tragedy of the little boy is that he never even managed to stick the world back together again. 

Once upon a time, there were three orphans.

The white-haired boy had been an orphan the longest, never having known any family that he might have had.

The black-haired child had only recently become an orphan, his parents’ deaths too fresh in his memory for him to think on them too long.

The yellow-haired girl was not, technically, an orphan; but her only family was her great-uncle, who was away fighting a war.

The orphans were young, but they were very strong. The white-haired boy could mold the power of the world into any shape he liked, using only his hands and his heartbeat; the black-haired child could mold the blood and spit of animals with the juices of any plant to create the deadliest poison, using only his hands to stop a heartbeat; and the yellow-haired girl could mold the world itself into any shape she liked, using only the power of her hands and muscles.

The three orphans were sent to war, because they were the strongest warriors that their village had to offer.

They were not afraid to go to war.

The white-haired boy was afraid to meet someone cruel, someone who could not be helped or saved or persuaded to admire. He was afraid of the truth of the world that not everyone can be an ally.

The black-haired child was afraid to die, another nameless warrior on a battlefield that was more bone and blood than dust and earth. The child feared the truth of the world that everyone dies.

The yellow-haired girl was afraid to disappoint her great-uncle, one of the most powerful warriors to have ever lived. She was afraid of the truth of the world that not everything matters.

The three orphans went to war, fighting alongside grown-ups and against adults for the good of the world, for the good of their village, for the good of the family that they no longer had and for the good of the families that cowered in the homes near the battlefield.

The white-haired boy made many friends, made them laugh with his tricks and jokes and stories, but he never cried when he saw that one of his many friends had died.

The black-haired child made few friends, speaking to them privately and quietly, looking at the ground and poking at dirt, but the child only stared accusingly at their bodies when they died.

The yellow-haired girl made no friends, all of the grown-ups on the battlefield with her terrified of her great-uncle, of the power her great-uncle held over where they were placed in the war. She wept for every single body she saw.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy.

The little boy fought in a war. He was very good at fighting in a war, and he was very proud to fight in a war. His family had been fighting in wars for generations, ever since wolves waged war on man, and the little boy was proud to continue that tradition.

The little boy didn’t have many friends. He was very bright and very happy and very helpful, but most of the people fighting in the war were grown-ups. Some thought that the little boy was far too little to be fighting in a war, and some were angry at the little boy for being at better at fighting in a war than they were.

The little boy didn’t mind, though. He had at least three friends: two littler boys and one littler girl.

The littler children were also very good at fighting in the war. It wasn’t tradition for them, like it was for the little boy, but they were still very good at it, and the little boy was proud to get to teach them the things that he knew that they didn’t know.

The three littler children were very famous for being so good at fighting. The little boy was famous too, of course, for the same reason, but he didn’t care much about that. He was just very proud of the littler children for being so well-known.

The little boy knew that he was fighting in a good war, for a good cause, for a good people. The little boy believed in what he did, and believed that what he was doing was right.

After many years of fighting, and being very good at fighting, and going from a little boy to a boy to a young man to a man, the man was sent on a mission.

It was a very hard mission, but the man was very good at missions, and had plenty of practice. He knew he would do well.

But he didn’t.

The man failed, for the first time, and he was so frightened that he ran right back home.

All of the people that the man had fought so bravely for, for so many years, hated him. They forgot all the good that he had done, all the kind things he had done for them and said about them, how clever the man was and how good he usually was at fighting.

The man was very sad that the people that he had fought for so desperately hated him.

The man was so very sad that the people hated him, that he died from his sadness. The sadness had settled in his chest, like a block of obsidian, and it weighed him down so heavily that he perished, the sadness finally escaping his chest and filling his home and the village with despair.

The people who hated the man didn’t notice, though. Only the people who loved him.

Once upon a time, there were three children.

They were best friends, all three from the same land, and the same town, even. Their country was being ravaged by two great and terrible monsters, who fought each other so strongly that they marked the very ground, killing thousands with each step.

Only the three children had escaped, from the many hundreds of miles that the beasts stepped on- they had all three been sitting beneath a tree that grew on the shores of the strong river that wove through their hometown, in just the right place to have been in the gulf between the toes of one of the monsters, while their homes were destroyed and their families killed and their belongings crushed.

There was a blue-haired girl and an orange-haired boy and a red-haired boy. The orange-haired boy was bold and hopeful; the red-haired boy timid and frightened; and the blue-haired girl sensible and powerful.

The blue-haired girl was the one who was the most likely to succeed. She was powerful, and she was beautiful, and she was intelligent, and she was young.

The blue-haired girl was the one who was the most likely to die.

For when the two enormous beasts had begun their battle which had destroyed the childrens’ country, they had unleashed an unprecedented number of other beasts and creatures and monsters, and all those beasts and creatures and monsters liked to eat little children.

One day, three minions of one of the monsters happened upon the three little children.

The three minions wondered what to do about them. One suggested killing them. One suggested ignoring them. One suggested helping them.

Two of the minions ignored the three little children, while one of the minions stayed and trained them. The three little children were suspicious of it, but the minion proved to be too dimwitted to be much of a threat. The minion stayed with the three little children for three years, ignoring calls from its master, until it declared them ready, and left.

The blue-haired girl survived. She was powerful, and beautiful, and intelligent, and she wanted only for her two brothers to survive.

The red-haired boy survived. He was timid, and frightened, and only survived by the skin of his teeth and the help of his siblings.

The orange-haired boy died. He was bold, and hopeful, and loved his brother and sister so very much, but he died.

After the orange-haired boy died, the monsters began retreating, returning to their slumbers, leaving behind a wrecked world and a wrecked country and a wrecked town and a brother and a sister, surviving an orange-haired boy and the monsters.

Once upon a time, there was an island.

The island was kind, but it was not soft. The island was hard, because the island lay in the center of the deadliest miles of sea in all the world. The island was kind, though, because it could not bear to see the people tossed and whirled about in the unforgiving waves and froths of the ocean, and so it accepted any and all who washed up on its shores.

The island did not speak to its people, and its people did not speak to the island- the island felt their love anyway, as they woke up on the shore and kissed the ground, as they laughed and danced through the island’s hills, as they painted every design they could think of on the stone walls of the island, as they built their village and families upon the island. The island didn’t need them to talk to it, because it understood anyway.

The people of the island were so clever- the woman with hair the same red as the sunrise before a storm, who had channeled the power of the world to walk on the roughest waves known in the world, who had named herself and the island’s people after that feat; the man who washed ashore a few months after the woman had given all the island’s peoples her name, the boy who had cherry-red eyes who wove the power of the world into an enormous net, for the island’s festival; the man who painted spirals and swirls all over the island when he was a boy, and then, as a man, learned to paint those spirals and swirls to keep things, painted spirals and swirls to hide a hundred thousand drops of poison, a million different blades, twelve hundred different people, all in a simple bamboo scroll.

The people of the island were so clever. They were so clever, and so kind, and so bright, and the island loved them all so much that it pulled their lives along, like a child tugging a wagon. The island pulled the lives of its people as far as those lives would go, not desperate to keep them, exactly, but reluctant to release them, so attached was the island to every one of its people.

The people of the island were  _ so  _ clever.

The island screamed as it burned, as it was washed away, as it was erased and vanished from the legends of history. It called out, desperately, for all of its people- but its people ignored her, too busy running, fleeing, desperately dodging the arrows and needles and firebombs that flew through the air, the nets of power woven by the island’s own techniques, the warriors walking on water with feet balanced by the island’s own design, the weapons and dangers appearing out of nowhere from the island’s own paintings.

The island died, screaming alongside its people, and its people screamed too, calling out for their father the island to live and to help them, calling out for their mother the whirlpools to fight and to protect them.

The furious eddies screamed, shrieked, indignant and affronted, so blinded with her rage that she attacked not only the enemies but her own children, unable to see the difference in the dark of the night, in the heat of the battle.

The island died, screaming and crying for its children, wishing, just once, that they could speak.

The island’s people- the island’s  _ clever  _ people, the island’s  _ bright  _ people, the island’s  _ kind _ people- the island’s people screamed, and many of them died, too.

Many days after the death of the island, the death of the island’s people, enough days to qualify for morning, the furious mother ocean reared back, away from the attackers who had killed the island, and pummelled them steadily with wave after wave after wave, fighting and frothing as they tried to restrain her with nets woven from her island’s own techniques, tried to vanish her away with paintings from her island’s own stone walls, tried to step upon her head with feet balanced by her island’s own design.

The mother ocean only began to yield when, once again, she heard the sound of her island’s people, calling from East of the island.

A funeral song.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

The little girl had long red hair and beautiful, slate-blue eyes. She was bold and she was brave and she was beautiful, and she had no family left and no home to return to. She was a drifting flower blossom, unmatching with the rustling leaves around her.

The little girl was afraid, though. She was afraid of being destroyed, of being erased, of being plucked from the wind and torn to shreds.

One day, as the girl was walking home from school, an old crone beckoned her over. The old crone sat on a straw-woven chair, gently fanning herself, and she offered the girl a gift.

The gift, the old crone explained, was a gift that would grant the girl bravery. The girl would be brave, and she would be intelligent, and she would have a place.

The girl wanted such a gift, but she was afraid. She was afraid that the gift would hurt her, that the old crone needed the gift more, that she wouldn’t know what to do with the gift.

The old crone told her to think on it, and to return, not just once she was certain, but once she was filled with love.

The little girl left the crone alone for many months, hiding from the gift and thinking about the gift and trying to find something to love.

And the little girl found many things to love. She found a little boy, who loved her just as much as she loved him, and she found a hidden garden, and she found a beautiful river and beautiful people and a home.

And then, once she had all of those things, the girl dreamed of the crone and the crone’s gift.

And so the girl went, in the middle of a bright, moonlit night, back to the crone. She was certain, now, and she was filled with love, as well.

The crone laughed when she saw the girl approach, and smiled, and beckoned the girl closer.

The girl went closer. The crone held a small gem in her hand, and she told the girl to tilt her head back and open her mouth. The girl obeyed.

The crone held the girl’s head, carefully, and slowly tipped the gem down the girl’s throat.

The gem burned, as the girl swallowed it, burned and tore and cut at the girl’s throat and down into the girl’s stomach, where still it burned, furiously, until the girl was certain that she was going to explode.

And then, with the crone holding the girl’s shoulders, the girl calmed. There was nothing to fear, so long as she was strong. If she was strong, she would be able to contain the raging fire, keep the destruction from reaching out to the wonderful home that the girl had found.

The girl contained her fire, blinking quickly to try and rid her irises of the dark red outline that had appeared within. Once she was certain that she was in control, she looked to the old crone to know what to do next.

But the old crone was gone, leaving behind nothing but a pile of ash in her place, and the girl was alone with the fire.

Once upon a time, there was a very strong little girl.

The little girl lived in a safe village, in an unsafe land. There was an enormous wildfire that was tearing through her world, burning absolutely everything in its path, plants and animals and paper and people alike, ignoring the cries and pleas for stop, for an end to the pain.

The little girl was also very nice, and very easily distractible, and very smart. The little girl was a lot of things.

The little girl was alone. She had been a member of a clan, once, but her clan was long dead, burned alive by the raging fire. The girl was raised by a young man, who had only one leg, instead of anyone who was her family.

The little girl was very nice because she didn’t want the last words that she said to anyone to be cruel words. That was what had happened to the young man with only one leg, who had loved the little girl’s brother, but had said cruel things to him before the little girl’s brother had burned to death.

The little girl was very easily distractible, because she did not want to think about the bad things. If she thought too long about anything, her thoughts turned to her burning family- and besides, there were so many better things to think about.

The little girl was born very smart.

The little girl was supposed to fight against the burning fire, with her two friends and her teacher. It was very difficult to fight the burning fire, because the fire consumed everything in its path, and someone could be standing in the middle of the fire and not even notice it, until they were burning.

The first time the little girl went to fight the burning fire, her best friend died.

As he was dying, within the burning forests, he told the little girl to take his eye. As she took it, the boy stared blindly up at the sky, where the embers floated up into the midnight blue and turned into the stars.

The little boy said that he would like to be a star.

The little girl said that he would be.

The fire kept burning, as the little girl and her last living friend ran away.

The second time that the little girl went to fight the fire, it wasn’t her idea. Instead, the fire snaked into the little girl’s bedroom, strangled the one-legged man, and stole the little girl away from her home.

When the girl woke up, the fire was already within her. It was not the burning gold and red fire that she had so long been fighting, but an icy blue fire, a fire that made her want to vomit, even with her empty stomach.

The fire burned the girl, but she could have controlled it. She could have locked the fire into the cage of her heart, and she could have lived.

Instead, the little girl’s friend came. She stared at him, and he promised that he would save her.

She hadn’t needed saving.

The fire burned out through the girl’s body, igniting her muscles and organs and blood, and she died in a typhoon of raging flames.

But the fire died with her, and the little boy was safe.

Once upon a time, there was a lost little boy.

He had a family, a very big family, but none of them cared about him, for he didn’t have a father, and he wasn’t at all like the rest of his family. He was loud, and emotional, and his family was quiet and stoic.

One day, the boy was sent out on a special mission. He was to go to the nightlit river, where everything was shadow, and he was to place a lantern.

But the lantern burned the boy, and no one would tell him that he could put it down.

So, instead, the boy burned, burned like a wax candle, and the river still could not be seen.

And when the boy was done burning, he reawoke, made now of ashes, and he saw a monster.

The monster had only one eye, and almost looked like he was made out of shadow, like a quick-whispered taunt about the little boy’’s failures.

The monster taught the boy a lot, and told him what to do and who he had to save, and the boy did everything the monster said.

And then, one day, the boy looked at his reflection in the lake.

And he saw the monster staring back at him.

Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman. They were both very powerful, and they both loved each other very much.

Inside of the woman was a storm cloud, and besides that, a baby.

The woman had made a promise a long, long time ago to the woman who had first captured the storm that she would never let the storm go, for the storm had nearly struck down the very village, and if the storm were ever to be released again, the village would vanish.

The woman knew that she wouldn’t let the storm cloud go. She was very strong, and very kind, and very stubborn.

The man loved the woman very much, because she was so strong and kind and stubborn.

One day, the woman was going to give birth to her baby. She was frightened that the storm cloud might come out with her baby, so she and the man who loved her very much went away so that the woman would give birth in private.

But something went wrong. The skies were overcast, as the woman gave birth, and lightning struck down from the sky upon her, and the storm was released.

As the storm was released, it came out in the form of a vicious wolf, mouth already open in a snarl, and it began to attack the village.

The man who loved the woman looked between her and the wolf, and went after the wolf.

The battle between the man and the wolf was an epic one, a duel worthy of having songs written about it.

But the woman was dying.

So the woman called for her lover, as she drew patterns over her son’s stomach.

And her lover came running back to her, grasping her hands as he led the nimbus wolf into his son’s stomach.

As the storm flew into the son, it struck out viciously with its lightning, killing the man and the woman and leaving the son tingling with electric potential.

Once upon a time, there was a wicked creature.

The creature looked nearly like a man, except for its arm. Its arm was coated with eyes from little children that it had killed. The creature killed lots and lots of children, and then it ate their eyes, because it thought children’s eyes were very delicious. The wicked creature had an entire farm’s worth of little children’s eyes to eat.

The creature liked to make the children want to come with it, instead of just stealing them. It especially liked it when the children’s parents offered up their babies to the creature. That was the most fun.

One day, a little boy came to the wicked creature and told it that his family was going to come and hunt the wicked creature.

The little boy didn’t want the wicked creature to be hunted. The little boy didn’t like for anyone to get hurt.

As a thank you to the little boy, for warning it, the wicked creature took the little boy into the woods and ate his eyes.

The little boy’’s cousin had followed the little boy, as he warned the creature and followed the creature into the  woods.

The wicked creature walked up to the little boy’s cousin and told him that if the he wanted to live, he would have to kill his whole family.

The little boy’s cousin didn’t do what the wicked creature said, though, and so he died.

Once upon a time, there was a frightened little boy.

The boy was afraid of everything. He was afraid of snakes and spiders and the dark, and war and pain and disappointing his parents.

The little boy was a very smart boy. He was the smartest little boy in his class, and the best little warrior boy. The boy was very good at everything he did, because the little boy did what he was told. If the boy ever disobeyed orders, he knew something very, very bad would happen.

One day, the little boy got to meet the bravest man in the world.

The brave man had fought in a war, once, and never wanted to do it again. He told the little boy what he had to do in order to prevent another war. The little boy had to take the life out of all the eyes of his family, fit it all into a jar for a lantern, and walk through the darkest night to light the way.

So the little boy went home, and his aunties and uncles said hello, and he took the life from their eyes.

And he walked down the streets, and he took the life from the eyes of his other aunties and uncles and cousins, until he came home.

He took the life from the eyes of his mother and father, carefully pouring the sweet, yellow light into his jar of life.

And then his younger brother came home, and he couldn’t take the pure white light of life from the eyes of his younger brother.

And the little boy ran off, into the darkest night, and he got lost, for he could not see the way.

Once upon a time, there was a girl, a boy, and a ghost.

The ghost had been dead ever since his older brother had murdered him. All the doctors said that the ghost wasn’t really dead, but that was silly. If he wasn’t dead, then he wouldn’t be a wolf.

The boy had a monster tucked away inside his tummy. No one ever told the boy that he had a monster inside of him, but it wasn’t hard to see, with the scars on his cheeks and burning ozone around him.

The girl was nothing but a girl.

The girl, the boy, and the ghost, were trained by a very smart dog. The dog wasn’t very good at training people, because he was used to training dogs. But he tried his very best, especially with the ghost.

The girl, the boy, and the ghost did a lot of fighting, learning, and questing. The ghost was the best at fighting, and the boy was the best at questing.

The girl, if she had to be good at something, was good at learning.

One day, the dog sent his three students on a quest.

The quest took them into a forest, where the trees were too tall and the creatures were alien and the wolves were too large.

Within the forest, they found a wicked snake. The wicked snake tried to take the ghost away with him, but the boy killed he snake, and so they continued.

Once they were done with the forest, they were brought to a grand tower.

In the grand tower, the ghost had to take a long rest, because he was very ill.

The boy had to fight a dog, but he won handily.

The girl, of course, lost.

Once upon a time, there was a little scorpion.

The little scorpion had a wonderful family, with an older sister scorpion, an older brother scorpion, and a father scorpion.

One day, the father scorpion sent the little scorpion and the brother and sister scorpion to a forest. It was a scary place for the three scorpions, because they weren’t used to being in the forest. They were used to being in the desert.

In the forest, the little scorpion faced a lot of dangers.

First, he had his fight his way to the center of the forest. That was easy, it only took him a few minutes.

Second, he had to fight an eagle. The eagle was very strong, much stronger than the scorpion had expected. But the scorpion still won.

And then, when the scorpion struck out to sting the eagle, the creatures of the forest accused him of being a monster.

After the scorpion fought the eagle, the scorpion had to fight a crow. The crow was almost as powerful as the eagle, but not quite- although, the crow was many times more clever than the eagle.

It was a good fight, but the scorpion did get to sting the crow, eventually, and won the bout.

His scorpion older sister and scorpion older brother were very, very proud of him.

Once upon a time, there was a shadow.

He didn’t quite exist, but he tried to, sometimes, for his friend.

One day, the shadow got tired of pretending to exist, and so he wandered off.

A snake found him after too long, and took the shadow back with it to its den.

In the snake’s den, there was a beetle and an owl.

The beetle was very cruel to the shadow, and liked to perform experiments on him for the snake.

The owl was already half-dead, on its mother’s side, and full-dead by the time the snake was done with it.

The snake taught the shadow how to be cruel. The shadow hadn’t necessarily wanted to be cruel, but it would be cruel, anyways, just in case that would persuade itself to exist.

After many years, the shadow finally started existing, and he ripped the head off the snake.

Once upon a time, there was a toad.

The toad was a great toad, a powerful toad, a wise toad, and a handsome toad. This toad was the best toad that had ever existed. A very clever toad, and a toad that was an excellent warrior, and a toad that could do anything.

One day, the toad found a tadpole.

The toad hadn’t wanted to take the tadpole along with him on his many excellent adventures, but he recognized that the tadpole had great potential, and so he took the tadpole along with him.

The toad was an excellent teacher to the tadpole. He taught the tadpole how to be a great fighter, how to be an excellent detective, and how to protect his precious fellow frogs.

After the toad had taught the frog everything he knew, the toad died valiantly in a great battle.

Once upon a time, there was a girl.

The girl was made out of paper, like a cut-out doll, and she didn’t really mind.

The only thing that the girl really cared about was her friend. She had known her friend for many years, ever since they both were children, and the girl had sworn to always protect her friend.

The paper girl’s friend was very, very ill, but he had one wish before he died. He wanted the fire that had killed his family, destroyed his home, and killed his and the paper girl’s other friend to be extinguished forever.

The fire was a very bad fire, the kind of fire that never stopped burning, even when there was no kindling left. The fire burned anything that was between it and more leaves or twigs to burn, and it never burned out.

And the paper girl wanted the fire to be put out just as much as her friend did, so she worked very hard at it. She got many friends to help her put out the fire; a shark, a crow, a puppet, a gold coin, a sparkler, a poppet, and a mask.

And they all worked very hard to try and extinguish the fire together.

But then, just as they had almost managed to do it, a frog appeared.

The frog wanted to talk to the paper girl’s friend, and she let him. He was only one little frog.

But then, the little frog set the paper girl’s friend on fire, and they all burned.

Once upon a time, there was a little monster girl.

The little monster girl didn’t want to be a monster. She wanted to help people. She wanted to make her mother proud.

But the little monster girl was a monster, of course.

One day, an even stronger monster took her in. The even stronger monster was very mean to the little monster girl, biting her whenever he pleased, without so much as a thank you.

After many years of living with the monster, a little monster boy came by.

The little monster girl spent a lot of time watching the little monster boy. The big monster was just as cruel to the little monster boy as it was to the little monster girl, but the little monster boy was much stronger than the little monster girl.

One day, the little monster boy killed the big monster.

After the big monster was dead, the little monster boy asked the little monster girl if she would come with him.

The little monster girl refused. She wasn’t strong enough, like the little monster boy was, or even like the big monster had been. She was just a weak little monster girl.

But the little monster boy said that she was just as strong as the big monster had been.

And the little monster girl had looked down at her little monster hands and had realized that they were just as bloody as the big monster’s had been.

So the little monster girl went with the little monster boy, and they found two more little monster boys, and they all together went off to fight the good humans, who were fighting for their precious peoples.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful valley.

The valley had a wonderful river running through it, and was filled with plants and animals. It was the loveliest valley in all the world.

One day, there was a terrible fight in the valley. It tore apart a wonderful friendship, killed a foolish man, and scarred the history of a village.

The valley took its time, slowly healing over many, many years.

Then, there was another fight.

It was another terrible fight, but this time between two children. It tore apart a wonderful friendship again, and scarred the history of a village again.

But it killed no man, for there were only boys who fought there that day.

The valley tried, once again, to heal.

But in the end, the valley died.

Once upon a time, there was a war.

And there was another war, and another war, and another war, and hundreds of tiny little wars scattered in between. There had always been war, and there always would be war. Ever since the beautiful princess had first taken a fruit from the kind old tree, there had been war- and even before the princess and the tree and the fruit. There had been war since before the first story, and there would be war for long after the last story.

There had been war forever, and there would always be war, for that was the way of the world.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

She was not a little girl who lived in a world ravaged by beasts, or a little girl who fought on the battlefield, or a little girl who tamed the fearsome waves, or a little girl who held back the fire, or a little girl who captured the thunderstorm, or a little monster girl, or a beautiful princess.

She was only an ordinary little girl, surrounded by un-ordinary people. One of her teammates was a little boy who had swallowed the sun, when he was just an infant; the other, a boy who had practiced his revenge so well by the time he was only twelve.

And that was nothing, compared to the other people the ordinary little girl knew. There was the girl who could take over people’s bodies, the girl and the boy who could read people’s bodies, the boy who could conduct shadows like a symphony, the boy whose great-great-great-great-great-grandmother had been raised by wolves, the girl who could hide anything in a scroll, and the boy who had nothing but his training.

The girl was nothing. The girl didn’t matter.

One day, one of her teammates betrayed her, and all he did when the girl saw him was leave her sleeping on a park bench. She was nothing.

The girl was nothing for so very long, that the shiny spark of rage that she had hidden away as a small child began to glow and glow and glow, brighter and brighter and brighter. It became brighter over the course of years, years enough that she was trained by a princess, becoming the most skilled warrior in her year. She could manipulate the power of the world with a pinky nail, could lift trees a hundred times the size of her own body, could nearly do anything her teammates could do.

But it wasn’t enough. The boy who swallowed the sun still wouldn’t accept the things that the girl needed to do, and the boy who wanted revenge still left her unconscious.

Once upon a time, there was a war.

This particular war was between the people of the world and the woman of the moon.

The woman of the moon was much more powerful than all the people of the world, especially with her precious sons fighting alongside her.

The people of the world were also so powerful, though. They had the sun on their side, who was in the form of a boy, bold and brash and brave, having faced his regrets and coming out stronger for it. And alongside the sun, they had the shadows, who were also in the shape of a boy, who was sly and intelligent and rude, having faced what had wronged him and wronged them in return.

But the woman in the moon was much stronger than the sun and the shadows, being far more than a mix of both.

It seemed rather hopeless.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was born under the full moon. When she blinked her eyes open, they were a soft, minty green, and when her hair first grew in, it was the color of camellia blossoms- until she grew up a bit, and it softened into the color of cherry blossoms.

As the little girl grew up, she heard a voice in her head. The voice was angry and loud and it never stopped talking, and it screamed when the moon was full, and louder when the moon was red.

The little girl knew many very powerful people. Everyone else she knew was much more powerful than she was.

Until there was an enormous war.

It was the largest war that had ever been, a war against people who weren’t even from Earth.

And the voice from when the little girl had been a child came back, yelling and screaming from across the battlefield and from within the little girl’s head.

And the shining spark of anger blew up inside the little girl, until her insides were all silver coated and glistening, and her eyes shone back white at her teammates and the enemies across the field and the voice from her childhood that shone and glimmered on the other side of the field.

From across the field of war, the woman from the moon stuttered to a halt as she felt herself echo back. to her from the forces of her grandchildren.

And the little girl stood alongside her teammates, her brothers in blood and toil, and at the same time she was the princess standing alongside her grandsons, and at the same time she was the girl standing alongside her wolf brothers, and at the same time she was the woman standing upon the waves, watching her new cousins wash to shore, and at the same time she was the woman with the sun in her stomach, standing alongside her husband and her enemy, and at the same time she was every little girl who had lived in times of pain and sorrow with two little boys.

And the little girl who was all of the other girls and women throughout history, alongside the two little boys who were all of the other little boys and men throughout history; and she charged forward against who she once had been, with her teeth bared and green eyes glowing pearlescent, and she bit out a piece of the voice from her childhood and as she did, the moon above them turned from a crimson orb to a smooth white crescent.

And the woman vanished, and so too vanished all her little white pollen, and the little girl screamed in victory, with the little boy on her right crowing and the little boy on her left howling, and the sky above them exploded into fireworks.

The little girl and her friends defeated the wicked villains, and they all lived happily ever after.

The end.


End file.
